Crucifixes and pig's trotters

Returning to "Pudding Island" after a trip almost anywhere is a depressing experience, especially when it's a Sunday and the Stansted Express (From £8* to central London) is closed for engineering works. Fuck knows what the engineers do every Sunday - the trains only seem to get slower. Squeezing my fat arse into a coach seat apparently designed for Haitian children, I opened my copy of the Observer, bought just before boarding to pass the interminable journey to London Victoria. Since I last read a newspaper, The Observer seems to have transformed into a gossip column for lefties, with the same stock pictures of royalty the Daily Mail uses but with added snide comments. Desperate for something to read, I turned to the restaurant review in the magazine. Jay Rayner is a fine restaurant critic and here is an extract of the words of high praise he has for Tuddenham Mill, "a smart boutique hotel" in Suffolk.

"A starter of pork neck carpaccio brings thinly sliced piggy that has been marinated and spice-rubbed then cooked sous vide for most of a weekend...It's fautless...Roasted chicken wings join hands with tiny brown shrimps in a cross-cultural marriage that is astonishingly successful...A perfectly cooked tranche of hake is served on bright green tapioca flavoured with watercress foraged from the bank outside...None of this is cheap, but then each dish is so evolved and elaborate that it feels like good value." The price per head, including wine and service, was £60, which probably doesn't sound unreasonable.

I'm just back from three days in the Picos and the Pyrenees, collecting seeds. Last night as it was getting dark, exhausted and hungry, I found a hotel in a small town in the central Spanish Pyrenees. I dumped my bags and went straight to the dining room, which was full to capacity with families and couples. I waited only ten minutes in a comfortable leather armchair before being shown to a table in one corner of the wood-paneled room. The waitress (there was only one) brought a menu, which she patiently translated, enquired whether I'd like red or white wine, and bustled off to attend to another table.

I cannot read this menu (see below) without my salivary glands going into Pavlovian overdrive. What would you have ordered? Should I start with a salad of baby lettuces with anchovies and langoustines or with artichokes stuffed with mushrooms? After that should I have octopus stewed in its own ink, pig's trotters or peppers stuffed with hake and salt cod? The life of a traveling seed collector is full of such dilemmas. After much mulling, the edge of my hunger blunted by the first few mouthfuls of red wine, I ordered the artichokes followed by the pig's trotters. The waitress queried my order. Would I really eat the trotters - "only people from here eat them"? I assured her that I would.

The artichokes arrived, four of them, perfectly pared down to their pale green hearts. A few tender leaves had been left to contain a broth of fungus, the basis of which was morels. The only thing that I will hear said against a perfectly cooked artichoke is that it makes all wine taste metallic but even I can endure ten minutes without a sip of wine, while I eat artichokes.

Years ago I went to La Tante Claire, a celebrated restaurant on Royal Hospital Road in London. The signature dish of the chef, Pierre Koffman, was stuffed pig' trotters, which I duly ordered and ate. It was an extraordinary dish, not least because to make a pig's foot palatable there are days of steeping, simmering and surgically precise de-boning to be done. What was brought to my table yesterday evening cannot have taken the cook much less time to prepare than Koffman's masterpiece took him and it was what you would expect it to be - pig-flavoured gelatine. I sucked it up, every last fatty morsel, and wiped the plate clean with bread from the basket that had arrived with my wine, which, incidentally, was a very passable red from Navarre.

I'm not really a pudding man but I felt obliged, in the interests of preparing this report, to order the yogurt mousse with strawberries. You may imagine for yourselves how delicious this was.

While traveling alone I often have the opportunity to watch fellow diners surrepticiously. I am very often struck by the fact that many couples dining together seem to have run out of conversation. They stare into space, at their neighbours, at the congeling food on their plates, anywhere but at their companion. I often have cause to celebrate the fact that I have only a book for company. Last night, however, the room hummed with conversation and everyone seemed to be having a good time despite, or perhaps because, they were dining with their families and friends.

At the table adjacent to mine was such a party; a young couple, with two children and several grandparents. The young mother was attractive and it was hard not to stare, especially because between her ample (but not too ample) breasts - to all intents and purposes naked - hung a large, silver crucifix. It was impossible to admire the crucifix without ogling the breasts, and vice-versa.

The price, advertised on the menu, including wine and bread was eighteen Euros. Now that, Jay Rayner,  is good value.


* If you happen to live in the arse end of Stratford or are prepared to spend fifty quid on a taxi to get to your actual destination.